An exploration of pizza in and around Rochester, NY, one pizzeria at a time

Friday, October 7, 2011

Free Pizza from Brandani's!

It's time for another pizza giveaway, and it's a good one - Brandani's, one of my favorite local pizzerias, has graciously agreed to give one lucky reader of this blog a free large pizza, with unlimited toppings. As readers of this blog will know, I've given Brandani's an "A" rating, for its great crust and wide selection of flavorful pizzas, so it'll be hard not to award this to myself, but I promise to be fair.
To enter, all you have to do is visit Brandani's menu page, then leave a comment after this blog post, telling us your favorite Brandani's slice or Specialty Pizza, or just stating why you'd love to win a free Brandani's pizza. The winner will be selected next Friday, October 14, and will be chosen at random using random.org. You may leave as many comments as you like, but multiple comments will not increase your chances of winning.
If you win, I will need your name and mailing address. You can email it to me ahead of time, at rochesternypizzaguy@gmail.com, or include it in your comment, or you can wait until the contest ends and the winner is announced. Be aware, though, that if I do not have your address in advance, and you are the winner, I will give you 48 hours to get it to me. If I don't receive it by then, I'll select a different winner.

28 comments:

I am a long-time fan! A simple cheese and mushroom pizza is my favorite. Their sauce and crust is spectacular! If I win, I'll share it with my family, as they have shared their traditional family flavors with us. :)

To the first commenter - please send me an email with some identifying information. Your identity on your comment is "opaque" and if you are the winner, I want to be able to confirm that nobody else can claim to have left that comment (not that my readers would ever do such a thing, but better safe than sorry). rochesternypizzaguy@gmail.com

Pizza Guy, You CANNOT use the term 'Super Slice' either in a quote, citation or paraphrase when referring to pizza, without acknowledging SALVATORES OLD FASHIONED PIZZERIA, aka: Fantauzzo Family Brands Inc. http://www.fantauzzofamilybrands.com/, who owns the Registered Trademark.

"Anonymous" -I have deleted the word "super." I'm not trying to be cute, but do you have a TM number? I tried searching for the term you mentioned on the USPTO site and couldn't find it. Not doubting you, I'd just be curious to read the TM document. Thank you.

For what it's worth, I searched "Fantauzzo" at uspto.gov and all I came up with was the name "Salvatore's Old Fashioned Pizzeria." A search for "SuperSlice" came up with a mark owned by an Indiana corporation as well as some "dead" marks that were owned by other companies. And a google search for "super slice" comes up with a pizzeria in California.

For what it's worth, what you conducted was a Q&D (Quick-N-Dirty) search. If you are going to exercise DD (Due Diligence) at least try to be thorough. I have included a link that should help alleviate your confusion.

Carefully read the paragraph that begins in bold letters: What is NOT in TESS?

Since I'm not seeking to register a trademark myself, I had no need to, and did not, conduct a due-diligence search. That's why I said, "for what it's worth," because I realized that I might have been missing something, so if somebody like yourself had more information I'd welcome it.If anybody's made a misstatement here, though, it would seem to me to be "Anonymous" (assuming this is all the same person), who stated that "Fantauzzo Family Brands Inc. ... owns the *Registered* Trademark" (emphasis mine). What I read the PTO site to say is that a mark can be entitled to protection and still not show up in TESS because the owner of the mark chose not to register it. So again, if I'm wrong, please enlighten me (and I mean that, not trying to be funny), but it appears to me from all this that Fantauzzo Family Brands is claiming trademark protection for the term "Super Slice," but has *not* actually registered it with the PTO. Not saying the mark isn't valid or entitled to protection, just that it appears to me that it has not in fact been registered with the USPTO.

Oh, one more thing - I'm not trying to stir up trouble, so out of deference to Salvatore's, I will try to refrain from using the term "Super Slice" when referring to other pizzerias' products, but I think it should also be pointed out that "Anonymous's" statement that "You CANNOT use the term 'Super Slice' either in a quote, citation or paraphrase when referring to pizza, without acknowledging SALVATORES OLD FASHIONED PIZZERIA" is a bit overbroad. Noncommercial uses of a mark generally do not constitute infringement. That's why you and I can talk and write freely about Coke without having to explain that "Coke" is a registered trademark of the Coca-Cola Company. Now if you are a Pepsi distributor and you say something about Coke, that's a different story.Now again, if it's going to piss somebody off I won't do it, but I don't want readers to be misled into thinking that they could get in trouble because they referenced somebody's trademark without adding the legalese.

I am not sure if I ever had a super slice from Salvatore's but I have had a super slice of pizza from Brandani's (and numerous others). And I can and will use the term super slice when referring to nearly any other pizza since I am not advertising or getting any monetary gain whatsoever by saying Super Slice! I think I'm just going to use it every chance I get!

Or even better, I'll just refer to any pizza that sucks as a Salvatore Slice...

OK - in the interests of freedom of speech, I'll let the last two comments stand, but future comments along these lines will be deleted. Obviously a lot of people in this area like Salvatore's, and I'm sure some people don't. But I don't need another schoolyard fight to deal with, so let's leave it where it stands.

Ratings Guide

A: great; one of the best this area has to offerB: pretty good; not top-notch, but definitely good, and better than averageC: OK; nothing special, but it’ll do; typical for our areaD: edible; if you’ve already paid for it, you might as well eat itF: downright bad; toss it and get something else